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More than a hundred years after women were enfranchised; the question of
women’s political participation is now on the international agenda, and
permeating many regional and national plans of action. Where are we
today and where are we heading for tomorrow? This is a question that
paraphrases the concerns of many of those who have dedicated their lives
and others who have taken up or been called by the commitment, to better
women’s public participation and political citizenship thus to enhance
their conditions, voice, and impact.
It is true to say that the rights women have achieved over the last 100
years and more, whether political, social, economic, or cultural, have
not been given, but hard fought for and earned. Even when men presided
over the ultimate authority and decision-making structures, it was women
who pushed for, expressed, formulated, lobbied, and sometimes simply
protested their rights into place.
When we look at the international scenario we notice that women’s
political representation is increasing day by day whenever and wherever
new elections are been held. This is evident from the world
classification of women representation in world parliaments (www.ipu.org)
although we find our self on a slow, rather incremental track with a
world-wide persisting gender-related democracy deficit.
Despite the relentless struggle for equal opportunities, women still
constitute 70 per cent of the world’s poor and almost two third of its
illiterates. As Nobel Price Winner Amartya Sen pointed out in his
concept of “Development as Freedom”, this exclusion ignores women’s
various significant societal contributions and their potential as
catalytic agents of political and economic change, which is a continuous
indictment to modern day progress. The fact remains that gender equality
is not a technocratic goal but a political commitment which will benefit
the society as a whole.
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Significant outcomes of both conferences have been an email
network/database of international scholars, academics and practioners and two upcoming book publications based on the papers
presented in 2003 and 2004.
n Kazuki Iwanaga (Ed.): “Women’s political participation and
representation in Asia: Obstacles and Challenges”, Copenhagen: NIAS
Press. Chapters from international scholars range from a comparative
focus on Asia to country specific studies on Taiwan, Malaysia, China,
India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines, Cambodia, South Korea and
Japan.
n Dharam Pal Singh (Ed.): “Women Development: The Rhetoric and the
Reality”, Punjabi University India. Chapters deal with the development
from women discrimination to women emancipation and development in Asia,
in particular South Asia with sub chapters on engendered development
challenges, national policies, (trans) national conflicts, women in
South Asian politics and role of NGOs.
The aim of the 2005 Conference is to study different dimensions of Asian
women in politics and examine the gender face of politics and
implication of gender in the political life in Asian countries. The
Conference is multi- and cross-disciplinary in approach and invites
contributions from social sciences and humanities from all parts of the
world.
Theme of the Conference:
Discovering the Gender Face of Politics
Focus: Asia
Women
Comparisons
Best Practices
Lesson Learnt
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